OF ANGELS AND THE DEAD synopsis

Of Angels and the Dead (174 pages) follows the lives of some university students in Santiago de Compostela during the 1970s. It was regarded as a groundbreaking novel when it was first published in 1977, shortly after the end of Franco’s dictatorship, for the way it used different narrative techniques. It opened up new possibilities for the Galician novel.

Four students occupy a bar in Santiago, the Galicia. They are bored and wonder what to do, waiting for the others to make a suggestion. One of them, Xoán, thinks about his mother, who doesn’t understand his lifestyle, his desire to wear old clothes, to smoke. He finds very little difference between her brain and the brain of an idiot. A report on the television reignites their conversation. A young English woman is being interviewed about holidays in Spain and bull-fighting. They comment on her appearance. Xoán has barely slept in two days and has a headache. He goes to the toilet. On his return, he watches a little of the film on television, listens to the conversation of two girls next to him and wonders how long it has been since he masturbated. He feels tired. He remembers his mother, father, grandfather. He needs money and should go home, but he doesn’t feel he belongs there. Guillerme again suggests they make a move.

Two school friends are swimming in Pontevedra estuary, next to the island of Tambo. Luísa is naked because she has forgotten her swimming costume. Encarna regrets they don’t see each other so much now that they are studying in Santiago. She tells Luísa about her boyfriend, Manolo, and how much she loves him, how much trust there is between them. The sea is full of corpses, some floating upwards, others face downwards, their bodies split by roots, giving off a terrible stench.

Luísa and Xoán are at a disco. Luísa tells Xoán how she found herself in a port, the fishermen unloading the fish, and she was suddenly alone. Encarna and Manolo had left her. While she was relieved not to have to put up any more with their artificial happiness, she was also scared to be on her own. In the end, the fish auction finishes and Luísa finds her friends. She doesn’t feel well and asks Xoán to accompany her home. She is in a forest, Encarna waiting on the beach, she is searching for firewood in the company of Manolo, who can’t take his eyes off her, and she is naked, although Encarna has said she doesn’t mind if Manolo sees her naked, she isn’t jealous.

Xoán walks around Santiago, a city where it is impossible to get lost, reflecting on his love affair with Luísa, which had started so passionately, the two of them feeling alive, exploring each other’s body, but had progressed towards silences and lies, the two of them living on the threshold of hell. When she is not there, Xoán finds the city horrendous, figures in stone embracing nothing, but suddenly he comes across her under the rain. It is market-day in Santiago. Dark, despairing figures arrive from abandoned mountain villages. Xoán and Luísa question the meaning of life; if happiness is in the future and can only be reached at the end, all that is left in the meantime is darkness. A friend of theirs, Atanís, is writing a novel about the right to be oneself and to be happy. He is on page 37 and hasn’t come up with a title yet. While Atanís continues to talk, a cow in the market urinates on the ground. Luísa’s mother is unhappy in her marriage. If she doesn’t leave her husband, it is because she doesn’t want to upset Luísa, although Luísa doesn’t care. She wishes she had married somebody else. She considers being unfaithful. Atanís carries on discussing his novel.

Luísa and Manolo make love together on the island of Tambo, in a deserted hermitage. On the way back to the beach, where Encarna is waiting, Manolo reproaches her for being a bad friend to Encarna and for claiming that everything is just ceremony. He prefers ceremony (their artificial happiness) to nothing at all. Luísa prefers nothing. This is the end of part one of the novel.